


Sands of Time

by Norickayer



Series: Postcards from Elsewhere: A Collection of Young Avengers one-shots [4]
Category: Harry Potter - Fandom, Loki: Agent of Asgard
Genre: Crossover, Gen, One-Shot, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-13
Updated: 2015-03-13
Packaged: 2018-03-17 15:33:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3534737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Norickayer/pseuds/Norickayer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt:<i> "Agent Loki jumping through time and space and finding herself landing in Hogwarts during the canon timeline at several points, messing around with people’s heads, and getting mistaken for some alternate-reality Harry at least twice because colors."</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Sands of Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [phoenixyfriend](https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenixyfriend/gifts).



The problem with walking the vast distances between the branches of Yggdrasil, Loki reflected, was that you never knew where you’d end up.

Usually Loki avoided such things, preferring to travel by teleportation, but when your foster-mother banishes you from Asgard in a dramatic and painful fashion, you have few options left.

One moment, Loki walked through an endless tundra, buffeted on all sides by snow and wind.

The next, ze was falling.

There was a _crash_ , and a _thump_ , and pain.

Loki lay still a moment, weighing zir options. Whatever had broken zir fall was made of glass, or something close to it. Shards covered zir like a blanket of teeth, stabbing into zir legs, ripping zir sleeves, getting caught in zir coat. Would it be better to lie still and bare the pain of stab wounds, or get up and risk being sliced further?

Footsteps echoed in the distance, soft leather on hard stone, amplified by the acoustics of a high ceiling.

Loki pulled zirself to zir feet. The glass caused less damage than ze feared, but more than ze expected.

Strangers approached, probably drawn by the noise. What to do, what to do?

The room Loki found zirself in was long and bright. Light shone from every angle, seeming to hang in the air rather than actually originating from a fixture. Despite this quality, it seemed to move around, as if Loki’s own eyes were a faceted stone catching the light.

But that might be the concussion talking.

Footsteps in the distance- and ticking here with Loki. The sound was so consistent and rhythmic that it hadn’t registered in zir brain at first, but there it was: undaunted, eternal, unrelenting. Like a heartbeat or a drum rhythm, it seemed to fill the room, and it was no wonder.

The space was filled with clocks. Big clocks, small clock, old clocks, new clocks, all analog. All, as far as Loki could tell, ticking along on genuine clockwork cogs.

More pressing than the clocks was the exit. Doors dotted the sides of the narrow room, squished between desks covered in cuckoo-clocks and watches. At the far end, another door. This one was wider, and, in Loki’s view, more promising.

Ze stepped toward it cautiously, the first step of a long walk. Zir legs shook, shifting on the debris littering the stone floor.

Loki glared down at zir feet.

“Y tu, legs?” Loki wondered. After the day ze’d had, why must zir own limbs betray zir?

There wasn’t just glass beneath zir feet, Loki noticed. There was sand as well.

Whatever glass case Loki had fallen onto was not empty. Dozens of tiny hourglasses lie on the floor. Several of them had broken open under the weight of an adolescent God of Mischief.

Loki wondered idly if they were important. If ze would be banished from another realm today.

A small smile grew on zir face.

Zir gaze drifted upwards, and finally ze saw what had been sitting behind zir.

Ze was wrong about the light having no origin. Here, sitting incongruously on a desk, was the source.

A bell jar containing a single living organism. As Loki watched, a small hummingbird grew to adulthood, shrunk back to a chick, and re-entered its egg. Several seconds later, the cycle began again.

So, clearly some sort of magic.

The footsteps reached the door at the far end of the room. Loki had stalled for too long.

Head still ringing, eyes slightly unfocused, Loki waited.

The door opened.

Seven figures flew in- or maybe it only seemed so. Their dark robes brushed the floor, and Loki could not honestly say whether or not they possessed feet.

Hoods obscured their faces, thick fabric hid their forms. Loki could only guess at the species. Vanir? Fae folk? Humans?

As one, the group lifted their left arms, brandishing twigs.

No, not twigs. _Wands_.

Loki held up zir good hand in a gesture of peace.

Ze shook zir head to clear zir vision. As ze did, a handful of sand was dislodged from zir hair.

The sand fell, as do all things.

Loki was gone the moment it met the ground.

-

To Loki, it happened differently.

Ze shook zir head. The sand fell. The figures raised their wands.

And the room changed.

The floor seemed to move under zir feet, although not by much. Still, even this small shift caused a sensation of vertigo in the injured god.

The clocks moved. Slightly, by a few inches each, but the grandfather clock faced a different direction, the cuckoo was lying on its side when before it was standing up.

And, of course, the robe-clad strangers were gone.

Loki took this in stride, and with once last glance at the hummingbird jar, ze left the room of clocks.

The next room was vast, cavernous. Rows upon rows of shelves filled the room, towering to the ceiling and continuing far to Loki’s left and right, where they were consumed by shadow.

It reminded Loki of a sort of occult library, the kind ze recognized from the faint and fractured memories of several deaths ago.

A strange library, except that instead of books, each shelf held a transparent orb.

They were clearly magical, possibly fragile. Loki knew without being told that ze should not touch any of them.

So of course, ze did.

Or ze tried to.

Just a moment before a black-painted nail scratched the surface of a globe, a voice rang out from the stacks.

“ _Stupefy_.”

A bolt of red light hit Loki in the back. The magic dissipated harmlessly against zir armor, warded and forged for just this purpose. Unfortunately for Loki and for zir attacker, the magic was undone, but the force was not.

Instead of lightly scratching the globe, Loki fell face-first into the shelf.

It was lucky that Loki was so completely covered. If ze had been wearing less clothing, it’s likely that one of the glass orbs would have touched zir.

Instead, Loki caught zirself on the shelf’s supports, saving zirself from harm.

But not the glass orbs.

They shook and rolled, jostling against each other.

The first one fell to the floor.

Out of the shattered remains, a ghost appeared, staring slightly to Loki’s left. She began to speak.

“ _In the eye of the storm, a hero will be born_ …” she said. Loki didn’t hear the rest, and neither did anyone else, because as she spoke, another orb fell.

From this orb, a small child, maybe nine or ten, emerged. They looked through the first ghost and began to speak.

Then another orb fell. And another.

All three released ghostly figures. All spoke at once, creating an incomprehensible din.

Loki’s attacker ran forward and steadied the shelf with their own hands. The remaining orbs shivered, but no more glass fell.

“Do you know what you’ve done?” the attacker- possibly one of the robed figured from earlier- hissed.

“Oh I’m sure I’ve just trespassed and destroyed a couple magical objects,” Loki replied with a pleasant smile.

“ _Prophesies_!” the hooded figure corrected. “You’ve destroyed these prophesies forever!”

Spá? Loki looked back at the orbs, some glowing with a diffuse white light, others cold and dark. They didn’t resemble any spá magic Loki knew of. Zir mother Freyja used weaving to see into the future, while others used water or ice.

But no one said it was Aesir or Vanir prophesy.

“Maybe we’re better off,” the god replied bitterly.

“You’ll be arrested!” the figure threatened, seething mad. “I’ll see you in Azkaban for this!”

Azkaban? Now there was an unfamiliar word. It must be a place, or a specific punishment for the All-Speak to not translate. Loki supposed it didn’t really matter.

“Good luck with that,” Loki replied as ze turned and left.

Ze made it five feet before the first bolt of magic hit zir. Ze stumbled, but continued on. Another came at twelve feet, then at twenty. The fourth spell hit the tiled wall as Loki limped out of the room.

The clock room seemed overwhelmingly long, and the very thought of walking to the other end to reach the far door made Loki tired.

Ze swallowed thickly and began walking.

The trick, Loki reminded zirself, was to only focus one step ahead. Just one step. Just another. Just another.

(Loki found life to be easier if ze thought of it as made up of tricks).

The room at the other end of the clock room was circular and dark. Dim blue light reflected off of a tile floor.

It should be cold here, Loki thought. Ze wondered if ze’d fit in better if ze was blue, too.

But no, the hooded figures seemed more humanoid than that. Better to stay pink.

The room was empty, seeming to exist only as a portal to other rooms. Twelve doors were set into the walls. There were no signs, and no handles.

Loki shivered. From the folds in zir sleeves, a few grains of sand were released.

It fell to the ground, and-

-

Loki was hit by a wave of vertigo, but this time zir surrounding did not change.

Ze grit zir teeth and rode it out, concentrating on not throwing up.

With slow, measured steps, ze made zir way to one of the doors. It matters not which.

Splashing water, flying lights, running figures in swirling robes as black as the tiled walls.

Running, yelling, dodging, cursing, screaming.

A green spell as bright at Loki’s scailmail flew toward zir. Up until now, the spells had been useless against a god, but the game seemed to have changed since the Hall of Prophesies.

Loki fled.

 _Dodge left, down, behind an overturned desk. Scuttle on the floor further, avoid all combatants_.

Something shattered above zir head, and the ambient light faded. Soon, most of the room was illuminated only by spells.

Loki cautiously peeked zir head above a desk, trying to find a safer exit.

It was impossible to determine. There were spells everywhere, people running. Destruction, chaos.

Loki felt that zir appetite for such things had faded. Give zir a quiet apartment and a friendly ear any day.

“Harry?” a voice choked out.

Several feet away lay a red-haired teen, staring at Loki with unfocused eyes.

“’yer greener than usual,” the boy continued.

Loki didn’t bother to correct him. There was an air of pain around him, an odd feeling, as if his story had abruptly gotten more real, the barrier between the tale and the action thinning-

-and anyway, he didn’t look up to conversation.

Loki continued on.

The spells were strange and unfamiliar to Loki, although the All-Speak translated the Latin words just fine. In some ways it reminded Loki of being caught in an anime, with all of the fighters screaming our their attacks at they happened.

In much the same way, hearing the attack announced didn’t help Loki to avoid being hit.

The _reducto_ curse only glanced off Loki’s back, but it was enough to send zir sprawling.

A bit of sand fell to the floor,

and Loki was gone just moments before the second spell hit.

-

Loki covered zir head with zir good arm and rolled. You don’t need to be familiar with the weapon to know basic defense, after all.

When nothing else hit zir, Loki opened zir eyes.

The room was well-lit. The desks had been righted, and the tank in the center of the room was whole and unharmed.

Several robed figures were staring at zir, but no one had yet reached for their wand.

Loki struggled to stand.

“Hello!” ze said, with more energy than ze felt. “Nice place you’ve got here!”

And with that, ze sprinted for the door.

It opened easily, bringing Loki back to the room of doors.

Loki looked left.

Loki looked right.

Everything was perfectly symmetrical, with no way to distinguish one door from another.

Loki realized with a start that, magic being what it is, the destinations might well have moved since ze last was there.

“I guess an exit sign was too much to hope for,” Loki sighed.

Without warning, a door creaked open.

Loki looked at the door.

Ze looked back at the room with the tank and the confused desk workers.

Well, it wasn’t possible to get more lost, was it?

Loki took the door.

Through the door was, rather incongruously, a landing with an elevator and a flight of stairs.

The stairs led down. Usually, one would take stairs to the ground floor to exit a building.

Judging by the lack of windows, Loki guessed that the ground floor

was _up_.

-

“I can’t believe you’re getting _married_!” said Sirius Black.

“You’ve said that already,” James replied.

“Yeah, but come one, are you really sure- there’s a war on, and you’re only twenty as it is-“

“You’d think _you_ were the one getting married,” Lily Evans, soon to be Lily _Potter_ teased. She reached over and laced her fingers with James’.

“Well, I reckon it can’t be that bad a decision, if my descendants aren’t coming back in time to stop me,” James said philosphically.

Suddenly, a figure in green and gold turned the corner in front of them.

Ze dashed toward them. James and Sirius leapt apart, barely getting out of the way.

“Excuse me!” the stranger yelled back without pause.

“Did you see-“

“Those _eyes_!”

“That _hair_ -“

James looked at his fiancé.

“Okay, we definitely have to get married now. Our babies would be _so_ attractive-“

“James Potter!”

-

Loki made it to the elevator before zir persuers (of course.) Ze smiled and straightened zir scalemail, dislodging a small pile of sand that had worked its way into the crevasses there.

The sand fell to the floor, and then-

-

Vertigo struck Loki hard. Combined with exhaustion and the movement of the elevator, it was too much.

Ze fell, hard. Zir broken arm bore the brunt of zir weight, sending spikes of pain into zir shoulder and down to zir wrist.

Ze wanted to cry. Ze wanted to scream. Ze wanted all of this Hel-damned sand out of zir clothing right now!

Ze sped out of the elevator- “Department of Magical Law Enforcement” the door announced- and down the hall, almost knocking over a teenage boy in zir haste.

“Hey, watch it!” he cried, gathering up his dropped wand. He stared after the god of Mischief’s retreating back.

“Harry, come on!” his companion cried. “You’re late to the hearing already!”

-

It took little effort to break the magic lock on an empty courtroom. Loki wouldn’t have been much of a God of Mischief if ze couldn’t handle and little B & E.

“If anyone’s recording this, I hope you enjoy the show,” Loki announced to the empty room.

Then, ze carefully disrobed. Sand fell to the floor, but Loki continued with zir motions despite the naesea pooling in zir stomach. The room flashed around zir, chairs moving by themselves, the walls changing in color slightly, and at least once a stunned audience winked in and out of existence around zir.

Loki shook out zir clothes for good measure before daring to put them on again.

“If this happens again when I shower, I’m lodging a complaint,” ze said to zirself.

The corridor outside the courtroom looked the same as if had before.

Loki cautiously make zir way to the stairs- ze had had enough motion sickness for one adventure, thank you.

“You’re lost, aren’t you Teddy?” a young voice echoed through the stairwell.

Loki glanced around, but unless some invisible child was lurking in the stairs, the question was not directed at zir.

“Of course not, I’ve been here loads of times!” an older boy answered. “We’re just taking the scenic route! I told uncle Ron I was going to show you around, didn’t I?”

The pair of speakers paused when their descent down the stairs brought them to Lokis landing.

They stared.

Loki stared back.

Two boys stood on the stairs. One, a child of maybe perhaps nine, dressed in an oversized sweater decorated with a large, mustard-yellow letter “A”. The other, a scruffy boy in his late teens.

Well, they certainly looked human, but that didn’t mean much.

“Hello,” Loki said pleasantly. “This is going to be a weird question. What year is it?”

The older boy was silent, frowning at Loki’s horns.

“It’s 2015,” the younger boy told zir.

Loki broke into a grin.

“Thanks!”

And this time, when Loki disappeared, it was on purpose.

-

“Why would that person need to know what year it was?” asked Albus Severus Potter.

“Dunno,” Teddy Lupin replied.

“Were they a time-travelor, do you think?” the younger boy pressed.

Teddy was silent for a moment, then- “Better ask your dad.”


End file.
